Star Traders: Frontiers News

Update #173 lifts of the starport tarmac with a roar bringing a long awaits UI improvement to the Contacts list, 4 new ship components, better rules for high Rep protecting against Rank/Permit/Edict loss and more. A huge thanks as always to all the players posting feedback, suggestions and bugs who help us drive continued improvements to the game!

We're in the final ramp up to the next major move on the Development Roadmap. A few updates from now, we'll be rolling out 2.6.1 with major new story Eras, galactic shifts and more!
https://steamcommunity.com/games/335620/announcements/detail/1696055855739611821
The map seed above is st-v01-40-6-10776916 if you're interested in a a nice multi-directional sprawl.


This request has been very popular for a while and we're excited to finally deliver. You can now search your Contacts for specific terms such as "quartermaster", "generous" or "prince missions". The search is a single keyword, so "prince missions" will only find Contacts who offer that type of mission, and anyone who offers any type of Mission and all Princes. You can also search zones, systems or quadrants like "Northpines" or specific Contact types like "Gestalt".

Search can be combined with filters and sort for the best effect.

We're rolling out Contact search as a first trial of the setup to gather player feedback, see if there are any issues and test the waters. From there, we will move on to other exciting areas like the System Atlas.


As we continue to fight the good fight to get enemy carriers to be ready, we've introduced a new set of Small slot anti-craft components. These components also have general bonuses that might make them appealing to wider ship design. The Railtak Guidance Matrices components add standard Accuracy bonus as well as an improved chance to hit enemy craft. The C-Tak Interceptor Systems increase a capital ship's chance to avoid craft attacks, increase Initiative and also provide Void Resistance.

While you may not be running to your nearest starport to install these just yet, the enemy AI ship builder is interested in using them and since you can capture enemy ships ... anyway -- they are nice!


With Update #173, we've rolled out an improved set of contextual rules for the loss of high grades of Ranks, Permits and Edicts. As you cross the 100 positive Reputation mark, these faction perks becomes more difficult to lose. Each category has its negative Reputation threshold loosened a little bit at the 100 Rep mark. For Military Ranks, it goes from -2 to -4 Rep to lose a Rank. For Permits, it drops from -3 to -4 and for Edicts -4 to -5.


This deserves to be a full heading. The princes of Weapon Lockers have been increased. You can now get an A4 for what you used to be able to get an A5. The middle tiers are also more expensive in a better curve. The enemy's access to Weapon Lockers has been adjusted accordingly to match.


Both Launch Bays and Hangars have gained Skill Pools to help them integrate into ship builds more directly.

We've also simplified some of the requirements for ship components, removing some of the lower Economy requirements, cleaning up Starport requirements and fixing a few tiered sets of components that had contradictory requirements.


- Added search feature for Contact list -- search "Quartermaster" to find specific recruits, "Generous" to find certain known Traits, and combine with filter & sort
- Added 2 new "Railtak Guidance Matrix" ship components to increase chance for capital ship to hit Craft and general Accuracy %
- Added 2 new "C-Tak Interceptor System" ship components to increase capital ship evasion against Craft, Initiative and Void Res
- Above 100 Rep with a faction makes it more difficult to lose high level Rank/Permit/Edict by 1 to 2 pts (-4 for Ranks, -4 for Permits, -5 for Edict)
- Launch Bays and Hangars all gain Ship Ops and Electronics Skill Pools
- Increased prices of Weapon Lockers A2 thru A5
- Fixed a number of component sets that had inconsistencies in Starport / Military / Economy requirements
- Reduced complexity in low requirements for components (removed all Economy 2 requirements, etc)
- Added System Danger rating to Star Atlas for better seeking recruits, orbital ops, etc
- Fixed pricing and component count issues with Skylift Carrier and other ships
- Fixed bug with De Valtos Grand Lux Suites not always providing 22% bonus
- Fixed some keyboard issues in the HUD and subwindows

Update #172 comes roaring out of atmo and into full orbit with a new ship and big community requested improvements to the Talent Manifest. A big thanks to everyone who is posting feedback, suggestions and bugs. This update includes a bundle of changes requested by different players all using the Talent Manifest -- straight from the community boards to you!

We're hammering through preparation to crack open the next phase of the development roadmap, the v2.6.x family. Another big Era is coming, and this update includes a lot of internal prep for the next Era, which we're on the brink of releasing.
https://steamcommunity.com/games/335620/announcements/detail/1696055855739611821
Now, on to the exciting new stuff!


The Thulun starports have produced a new heavily armored freighter that uses fighters primarily for defense -- the Skylift Carrier. It is well equipped to protect crew and cargo and its design prefers armor and speed over shielding and agility. It features an oversized Warhammer Void Engine more commonly used in battleships. The Skylift is a secure cargo hauler's dream ship. It's a beast of a carrier boasting 12 small, 10 medium and 6 large slots.

Oh, it also has a passenger cabin :)


First, we've enabled collapsible sections throughout the Talent Manifest which was needed as we've loaded 5 more major groups into it. You can now quickly browse the major sections, and view the groups you want.

There are even more sections coming, but with this update we've added a new "After Landing" section that covers Talents like Listening Post and Generous in Service. We've also added an entire group for "Contacts" which includes Talents that reveal traits, discount services, ranks, introductions and the rest. To test the groupings, we've added a section to cover the 3 core types of Orbital Ops -- Blockading, Patrolling and Spying. If these are found helpful by the community, we'll add Salvage, Black Market and Exploring as well to round out the set.

So far, we're still keeping Crew and Ship Combat Talents out of it. Those will need to be visible in their own blocks and also visible in the Ship Encounter screen, so they are coming soon as well.


We've also fixed an issue that was causing xeno battles encountered through Missions to be incorrectly underscored for Unlocks, Awards and for your Captain's Score. This is now resolved!


- Added SkyLift Carrier new massive carrier at 8000M class, 5 Craft and 7 Officer
- Unlock Skylift Carrier with the "Adventurer" Award
- Talent Manifest sections can now be toggled open/close to enable longer list of talent groups
- Added new section to Talent Manifest for all "Contacts" Talents including discounts to rank, edict, permits, introductions and Trait reveals
- Added new section to Talent Manifest for all "After Landing" Talents including Generous in Service, Listening Post, etc
- Added new section to Talent Manifest for 3 orbital ops -- Blockading, Patrolling, Spying -- with all active and passive Talent types
- Separated "Makeshift Repairs" (wilderness landing repairs) and "Port Maintenance" (urban landing repairs) in Talent Manifest
- Aded Electronics Tech "Alert Scanner" Talent to the "Travel and Hyperwarp" group in Talent Manifest
- Fixed miscounted Talents in the Black Market trades over $5,000 category in Talent Manifest
- Fixed scoring issue with xeno missions not properly counting xeno battles

Update #171 rolls out with some exciting new changes to how Contact Traits can affect Missions, a second round of QoL improvements to Mission offers, sharpening the teeth of all crew and ship danger cards in operations, better weighting for xeno-related missions and more!

If you're enjoying the pace of updates, please tell a friend and leave a review!


Contact Traits have gained some new teeth with Update #171. Unknown Traits can now keep some of a Contact's true agendas hidden until they are known. The first type of Trait-Mission relationship like this is in the Cult Leader Trait, the Xeno Obsessed Trait and the Collector Trait.

Much like recruit bonuses from Traits which only function when the Trait is known, these Traits now add special types of Missions once they are known. Once your Contact has let you in on the secret that he or she is dabbling in a cult, they're willing to start asking you to help them with that secretive side of their life. In this case, a new Mission is available that will ask you to gather Terrox Artifacts through xeno ship combat, exploring, salvaging or however and stash them on a wilderness world for the Contact's agents.

This new branch of the Contact Trait hidden impacts has a lot of potential and we can't wait to see more Trait-Mission combos added over the coming updates!

Finally in other xeno-related news, we've also adjusted the weighting on the Xeno Hunter mission giver to make it more likely that the focus will be on missions to hunt down and destroy xeno.


Across the board, the cards that warn of ship or crew danger have gained in power in both Orbital Ops and Exploration. These cards can be at times easy to avoid if you have enough of the right Skill saving Talents on hand. But now, they have some more serious teeth and if you fail to save them you're going to feel it. A few fails in these common cards can send a crew back to a landing zone for some R&R. These changes help shift more value into the ship components that can pull the teeth out of these cards by mitigating crew and ship damage in ops.


Based on feedback from players (thanks @gravling) we've doubled down on the improvements to the mission offering screen. It now shows the total jumps and offered price of the mission, as well as the distance of the first jump. If the mission is one-way, meaning that all of the jumps lead to a single destination and there is no return trip, this is also noted in the mission offer. These extra details in the summary will help players stay out of the extended mission description. We'll keep grinding on improving this section as we go!


We've updated the rules for Trade Permits in Trade Alliances and fixed a long time bug. The bug was allowing honoring of permits up to grade 4 when the rules stated only grade 2. We've met in the middle here, allowing Trader Permits to honor up to grade 3 and fixed an issue with the logic on grade 1 permits always being counted as 2.


We've made some important tweaks with Update #171 to specific missions and stories. We've fixed a faction mismatch in the "Smuggler Snatch" Mission. We've also doubled the timeline for the "Call of the Strong" Mission, basically making Commander Axeil far more patient.

And of course, a lot more. Check out the full release notes below!


- New Contact Trait specific Mission Types - Stash Xeno Artifacts
- Contacts with "Cult Leader", "Xeno Obsessed" and "Collector" Traits may ask you to find xeno artifacts for them, if you know the Trait
- Introduces new "hidden agenda" missions pattern based on Trait knowledge
- Improved mission offer display to show both total mission jumps and price as well as distance to first step
- Mission offer summary now calls out missions that are one-way -- you jump out to the destination but are not paid to return
- Improved power of Trade Alliances and Trade Permits -- factions will now honor up to grade 3 Permits
- Doubled storyline timeline for "Call of the Strong" storyline
- Improved faction targeting and description of "Smuggler Snatch" mission type
- Adjusted penalty to selling price on indie worlds to be -10%
- Improved the weighting of Xeno Hunter mission types to focus more on xeno
- Increased danger from Crew / Ship Danger rolls in Orbit and Exploration
- Fixed bug with "Bandit" Trait allowing more than 3 character Traits to jack the bonus above 30%
- Fixed some Salvage cards that were not reporting loss of Rank/Permit/Edict due to Rep loss
- Clarified time required to remove Trait through Contact Trait Reconditioning Service
- Fixed bug where a anti-xeno Mission might be shown as assigned against another faction
- Fixed Rare Trade Good counter in character template creation when selecting contacts
- Fixed Crew Combat log bug that caused initial target's defensive stats to be printed for every target in AOE attacks
- Fixed display bug showing negative ship component damage under some circumstances

Update #170 rolls out with a big focus on captain's quality of life in ship status and while planning how to upgrade your ship. These changes are a continuation of work we began last week and improvements that have been requested by different players. We're happy to deliver more ship component icons as well as visually marking the level of all tiered ship components directly on the icon!

A huge thanks to everyone posting feedback, suggestions and reviews!


Whenever you're looking at a ship component that has a level as part of its description, you'll now see that level in roman numerals over the icon, easy to read and see at a glance. This is a huge help in being able to visual share a ship design. It is also even more important when browsing component lists within the starport.

Along with this, we've done some name standardization to be sure that any component which is part of a tiered setup (1 to 4, etc) has the level in its name (Pilot Assist Module 1).


We've also added a new set of component icons for the different modules of your ship -- differentiating Armor-focused components, Shield-focused components, those types of seals and plating for orbital ops and ship combat, as well as spike modules. We've also added icons for the exo-crawler exploration components and differentiated Warhammer and Behemoth Void Engines.


- Improved ship component display for shopping, sharing and planning
- Added new component icons for Armor components, Shield components, exo-crawler, Behemoth and Warhammer void engines
- Added new component icons for operations seals and protectors, spike modules
- Added level tag to all icons for all ship components in sequences (Fuel Tank 1 to 4, etc)
- Improved consistency of naming of ship components, especially those in a sequence (Pilot Assist Module 1)
- Fixed reported issues with Mission jumps
- Clarified rules for Rank / Permit / Edict loss in the Contact details panel

Update #169 comes hot on the heels of the last one due to a bug in th emission jump calculations on some platforms. This is now fixed with Update #169, but a few other nice improvements got caught up in the net and are ready to ship! So we ship!


This patch includes a reduction of the chance of Trait mutation for some very common activities like visiting a doctor in the landing zone, making a hyperwarp jump or ship encounters that end in a draw. This will help further balance the traits of crew to be about more interesting events like emergency HW jumps, ship victories or exploring wilderness zones.

We've also completed a pass to tie more Traits to more mutation events, improving on the concept that your actions directly drive and develop the type of crew that hangs around you.


We've added a number of new entries to the captain's log with Update #169. These include reaching major level thresholds with your captain -- 20, 30 and 40 -- as well as promoting officers or dismissing crew. In addition, we've added more story event logs which help tie together the arc of a story when you are looking back over your captain's log.

We've made additional balances to the Dart Jammer, Degla Megalift, Skylift Carrier which is an on-going process as we are balancing out ship components and crew/cabin masses.


- Fixed reported issues with Mission jumps
- Improved variety of traits in motivation engine / mutation rolls
- Reduced Trait mutations from Doctor, Hyperwarp, Combat Draw
- New Captain Log Entries for Promoting Officer, Dismissing Crew Members
- New Captain Log Entries for reaching Level 20, 30, 40
- Added new story event logs for major story events like second Arbiter mission
- Fixed icon for Defense Pattern Matrix
- Ship Balancing for Dart Jammer, Degla Megalift, Skylift Carrier